


Fraudulent Repo men - true or false?

by scribblesandscreeds



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 18:18:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5137814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblesandscreeds/pseuds/scribblesandscreeds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snopes discusses the apparent rash of fraudulent repo men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fraudulent Repo men - true or false?

Claim: Black market surgeons are masquerading as Geneco employees, butchering and stealing organs from innocent people who have either fully paid off their surgery costs or are keeping up with their payments.

Status: MOSTLY TRUE

Examples:

> (Collected via email, March 2036)
> 
> I just heard this from my next door neighbour.... very scary stuff! Apparently, her daughter’s best friend Zita was attacked on her way home... by a Repo man! Now, Zita just had new kidneys and her breasts augmented three months ago and she was very proud of them... the surgery was a graduation present from her parents... THEY PAID FOR IT IN CASH. Zita is NOT an organ thief! When the “repo man” stopped her he didn’t have any proof that she was behind on her payments or even that she’d had surgery, and his shoulder decals were only held on with Velcro... how do I know this? Because LUCKILY, some people came past and frightened him away... JUST AS HE WAS ABOUT TO MAKE THE FIRST INCISION. As he ran off one of his ‘Geneco’ patches fell off... Apparently this is happening a lot... fraudsters out to make a quick buck are slicing open innocent people in order to steal and sell on their organs! Zita was lucky enough to get away this time – maybe the next person won’t!!!
> 
> Be careful out there!!!
> 
>  
> 
> (Collected via email, February 2036)
> 
> Now, I’m not prone to hype or panic, but I heard this on the news the other day – there are people out there pretending to work for Geneco, and they are stealing organs that have not been defaulted on. Anyone who sees them assumes they are legitimately repossessing Geneco property and goes on about their business as if they haven’t seen anything. These people are very hard to tell from the real thing – and of course, once you’re close enough to see that they have no ID, it’s too late, they’ve got the scalpels out!  
>  Something has to be done about this. Of course, if organ repossession wasn’t legal in the first place, no-one would let these con men get away with it. I urge you, for the sake of everyone you know who has ever undergone transplant surgery, to illegalize organ repossession, and vote NO on Prop 32.14.
> 
>  
> 
> (Collected via Facebook status update, December 2035)
> 
> So I heard there was this girl who had never had surgery, she was saving herself for her first major organ failure... and the Repo men came and took her spleen. Geneco f**k-up or worse?
> 
>  
> 
> (Collected via the letters page of The Evening Slice, November 2035)
> 
> Is it true that there are Repo men out there who aren’t real Repo men? I want to get my lungs replaced, but now I’m scared in case they see that I’ve had surgery and kill me! I heard they take everything – even your toenails!  
> 

Variations: The victim has failed to keep up with their payments, and the fake Repo man is one step ahead of the real one; the “Repo man” is in fact a medical student using the guise as an opportunity to practice their dissection and vivisection; the Repo man is in fact a corrupt Geneco employee working in collusion with Graverobbers. 

Origins: While at first this looks like a case of scaremongering circular e-mails(see http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp for a similar, classic tale), we have to report that this is in fact true. Crime reports of credit defaulters found already gutted of their valuable organs support the theory of the ‘one step ahead’ fake Repo man, but the truth is even scarier than that. Fraudulent Repo men do exist, and they don’t care who you are, how much you owe on your surgery or even if you’ve never had surgery at all – if your body is functioning, they want to strip you down for parts. 

Despite Geneco’s ‘waste not, want not’ policy of taking all useable organs and tissues from organ thieves keeping prices low, there is still a thriving black market for stolen body parts. You can help reduce this threat by only buying your organs from licensed sources.  
The temporary nature of their disguise – the removeable ‘Geneco’ logos – suggests that these thieves are in fact scared of being caught, as does the anecdotal evidence that they will run when confronted. More evidence suggests that at least some of them are amateurs – bodies have been found with organs still intact inside them where they have been missed, or mangled so badly that they are completely unuseable.

The hijacking of this serious issue by the ‘give me my organs and surgery for free’ proponents, as seen in the second email, is a tasteless and vulgar plea to the emotions. This is an issue of theft, plain and simple. If we allowed people to waltz off with organs they didn’t pay for, someone would have to pick up the tab – and that someone would be you and me, when the price of life-saving surgery rockets and leaves us destitute.

A Geneco spokesperson released this statement to the press:

>   
>  “All official Geneco Organ Repossession employees carry the medical records of the customer whose case they are settling. If you encounter a surgeon claiming to be a ‘Repo man’ who does not possess and double-check your documents, they are a fraud. If you manage to survive your encounter with them, you must report them to Geneco immediately. If your encounter with such a conman proves fatal, you can die safe in the knowledge that you retained full legal possession of your transplanted organs and that Geneco property was not stolen.”  
> 

Any genuine Geneco employee will not be intimidated by honest questions from a third party, and will have evidence in the form of the defaulter’s medical records to support their activities. Of course, any genuine Geneco employee will also be careful to carry out their work in private – they may be eviscerating someone, but they try to avoid causing distress or trauma to the innocent public. If you see what appears to be an organ repossession in progress, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If it’s genuine, you will have done no harm and the Repo man will carry on with his business, and if it’s fraudulent, you may prevent corporate theft and even save a life. 

So, to sum up, always be sure to carry your vital documents with you, and whenever possible, travel in groups. And keep up your repayments, lest it be a genuine Repo man in the rubber overalls coming towards you!

 

Baomi “I’ll scream and scream until you steal my vocal cords” McMate


End file.
